The Myth Is Not Supposed to Retire
by Queen of Dreaming
Summary: It's impossible to stop being a dreamer, and most people wouldn't even want to try. And great dreamers don't live very long. Ensemble fic.


**Title:**The Myth Is Not Supposed to Retire (We'd Rather It Lit Itself On Fire)  
**Characters/Pairings:** Saito, Ariadne, Eames, Cobb, Arthur, Yusuf [brief Saito/Ariadne]  
**Rating/Warnings:** PG-13, swearing, repeated character death, suicide, implied alcoholism, workplace accidents, and cancer. It's about dying young.  
**Written For:** Nessimore on LiveJournal, who prompted "Saito outlives them all."  
**Author's Notes:** The title is borrowed from Vienna Teng's "Love Turns 40."

* * *

Arthur, strangely, is the first to go, just two years after becoming the point man who helped perform inception. The PASIV malfunctions while he's under; the others simply wake, but the primary dreamer is always under a different kind of stress. His brain is half gone before they can detach him; he is dead long before they reach the hospital.

Saito attends the funeral without comment. It is one of those perfectly clear-skied October days, incongruously beautiful, and a surprising number of strangers are there to pay their respects. Saito stands a little apart from them all as he waits for the ceremony to start, but a group brushes by him and he catches a snatch of their conversation.

"It's a little frightening, isn't it? I mean, if that chilly bastard can die –"

"_Harrison!"_ It's loud, for a whisper, and razor-sharp. "You can't call the man that at his own _funeral_!"

"Sorry! I mean, I didn't mean it disrespectfully – it's what made him the best."

Saito moves away.

At the burial, the remains of the inception team cluster together by the headstone. Saito drifts over slowly in time to here Dom say helplessly, "If it helps – he wouldn't mind going this way. It was what he loved."

"Thank you ever so fucking much, Dom!" Eames snaps, turning heads. "I obviously had no idea what Arthur would think or what he loved, now did I? I only –" He breaks off and turns away, snorting. "And now I'm making a scene at his funeral. Fucking perfect."

"You know perfectly well that he never actually minded," Ariadne says softly, and pulls Eames into her arms. Yusuf rests a hand on his back as the forger buries his face in her hair.

Cobb just hovers.

It's him Saito approaches. "My condolences," he says, fully aware of the inadequacy.

"Saito? I didn't expect you to come."

He shrugs. "Given that he was in my employ, I felt an obligation."

"It wasn't your fault."

"Thank you. Nonetheless…" He gestures mutely towards the grave.

Cobb sighs, drooping like the dying leaves; he looks weathered, worn away. "He was so damn young."

"How old –"

"Thirty-two."

"Very young," Saito says quietly, remembering late-night conversations as Cobb explained about his own life after Limbo. "Yes."

* * *

Saito flies halfway across the world to make it to Cobb's funeral.

This one is quieter, private; the graveyard is washed-out and dim, the wet earth aromatic by the grave. Cobb is buried in a polished urn, so none of the guests have to consider how little there was left to bury after he followed his wife off a seventeenth-story windowsill. James and Phillipa do not attend. Marie considers it too much for them, coming so soon after their father lost custody. Saito wonders if she's trying to convince herself that the timing is coincidental. It's possible. She might even consider this vindication.

Eames, Ariadne and Yusuf arrive at the burial side by side. Ariadne stumbles, fine black heels slipping in the soaked March ground, and Eames steadies her without needing to look. Yusuf nods to Saito, and the businessman stands with them as the ground slips over the extractor's remains. Ariadne tosses something – a worn brown top, one Saito remembers seeing on his own crumpled-paper palm – into the grave, and it clinks against the gleaming metal.

The dreamers still cling to each other at the dreary little reception; Saito wanders towards them just in time to hear Eames say quietly, "You know what the worst part is? All I can think is thank God Arthur didn't have to try to sort through all of this."

Saito nods, imagining the point man's probable response to it all. The discovery, the court battles, the accusations of criminal insanity, everything.

Yusuf touches his elbow, and he nearly falls.

"Mr. Saito," he says. "I realize – that you and Mr. Cobb had an understanding of sorts."

"Indeed?" Saito asks; to his astonishment, his voice is as unsteady as he is. He tells himself that he did everything he could to keep the court records buried, that there is nothing he could have done to prevent the issue being raised again. It's a lie.

"I have never been in Limbo myself," Yusuf says quietly. "Nor have my dreamers. But many of them become – detached, even so. Reality becomes less concrete. I've talked to many of them, when it's been difficult." He swallows. "If you ever need any assistance, I might be able to provide some."

Saito blinks – once, twice, three times – and swallows hard. The dampness in his eyes surprises him more than it ought. "Your kindness is very much appreciated," he manages after a moment. "Thank you."

* * *

He gets the call from Ariadne just after dinner.

"Yusuf's lab exploded last night," she says, blunt as a bad knife. "I thought you might like to know."

Oh.

"Saito?"

"Yes? Yes, I'm sorry. I –" He covers his eyes. "Thank you for telling me. Do you need any help sorting out his affairs, or any such thing? Or does he have family?"

"Eames and I are taking care of it. He left things very organized." The phone speakers make it impossible to tell whether the choked sound is a laugh or a cough or something else entirely. "He left a fortune to research in therapeutic dreaming, and to the attempts to legalize it. He never even mentioned that he had so much." She pauses. "Some of it was from you, wasn't it?"

"Yes." His voice sounds oddly detached. "Expressions of gratitude, nothing more."

"I see," is all she says. "The memorial service is in a week. I take it you'll be there?"

"Undoubtedly." He doesn't remember hanging up, but he must have.

He spends most of this particular ceremony trying his hardest not to think. Ariadne clings to Eames throughout it all, crumpling his jacket and ruining her hair by leaning against him. Saito remembers past funerals and tries his hardest not to recognize that this increased desperation in her clenched hands comes from the lack of Yusuf to lean against.

When she leads Eames over to him after the funeral, Saito realizes the other man is shaking, and reconsiders the subtleties of Ariadne's motivations. She looks like a city after an earthquake; Eames looks like a city hit by a hydrogen bomb.

"We're going for a drink," Ariadne says, hoarse but steady. "Would you like to come?"

He needs to be back in Japan tomorrow. It was hard enough to explain to his underlings that he was coming here at all. This will not be in any way wise.

"Please," he says quietly, and they end up talking about nothing all night in the grimiest bar Saito has seen in his criminally long life.

* * *

It is only by the greatest stroke of luck that Eames does not simply disappear, stabbed twice in a Chicago alley. His phone was open beside him; a rookie cop finds Ariadne's number in the recent calls and tells her carefully what happened. She has Eames flown back to New York; he's buried in the same cemetery as Arthur, whose grave is mossy now.

Ariadne is a wreck at the funeral, sickly grey under all her black lace with exhaustion bruising her eyes. She hasn't cried – mascara still perfect, face bone dry – but she's twisting a tissue to shreds in her hands. Saito squeezes her shaking shoulder; it is more of a surprise than it ought to be when she half-crumbles against him. Thankfully, he has the presence of mind to wrap an arm around her waist while they listen to the patter of earth on the coffin.

They separate at the reception, but he sees her in the parking lot, leaning against her car with her hands over her face.

"Ariadne?" he says softly, stopping. "Are you…"

She straightens. "I'm fine." He raises a dubious eyebrow and she glances away, first at the ground and then at her car. "I should probably call a taxi, or something."

"I will drive you home," he says immediately. "With your permission."

"You don't need to –"

"I am aware," he cuts her off, holding a hand out for her keys. "You do not need to call a cab, either."

After a long moment, she whispers, "Thank you."

She collapses into the passenger seat and turns on the stereo; piano and strings fill the car as he pulls out of the parking lot.

"I figured out what happened," she says over the music. "Pieced it together. The mark was a mob man, and the point man was new. They left traces, then split immediately after. Eames didn't leave town right away, and they tracked him down."

"Ah," is all Saito says. He doesn't understand her purpose here, but if she needs to know, and to tell him, then he is willing to listen.

"He never could fight drunk," she adds, staring blankly out the windshield.

"Drunk?"

She glances over at him. "Of course he was."

Saito decides not to ask.

It is almost dark when they reach her apartment, in one of the most coolly modern buildings in the city, and Saito helps her carefully out.

"Ariadne," he says, stops, and then decides to go with his impulse after all. "If you would prefer not to be alone, my house is always open to you. I'm flying back tonight, and you would be welcome to accompany me."

That gets a wavering half-smile out of her, at least. "Thank you, but I need to work tomorrow. We're midway through a heist, and I can't just drop it."

"I see." He is still holding her hand; he squeezes it now. "Sleep well, then." He does not realize the double meaning until after he says it, but it seems to fit acceptably regardless.

"Thank you."

"My offer stands," he says just loud enough to be heard, watching her vanish straight-backed through the doors.

* * *

She tells him in their favorite restaurant.

Saito has made reservations right by the glass curtain wall; Ariadne loves to look at his city from here, when nothing can be seen but lights and stars. It is a little thing, comparatively speaking, but over the past few years he has gotten into the habit of doing such things.

She is lovely tonight as almost always, stunning in peacock-blue silk, but she seems distant. He does not demand her attention; sometimes she is like this, and he has learned that there is nothing he can do but touch her hand over the tabletop in between courses.

He is just lifting the first bite of his entrée to his lips when she folds her hands behind her plate and meets his eyes. "I have to tell you something."

He pauses. "Yes?"

"I have a brain tumor."

For precisely one moment, the entire room hangs perfectly motionless and silent in negative space.

He puts his fork down; the _clink_ echoes like a gunshot. "Well. That's unfortunate, but I understand there have been some remarkable advances made in the relevant fields recently, and of course I will ensure that you receive the best available care –"

"The chemotherapy won't work right, not with the levels of Somnacin built up in my system. It'll kill me faster than the tumor will."

He notices a tiny, tight curl brushing the clean curve of her neck. She is wearing the same silver necklace that she always wears to this restaurant, no matter what; the diamonds in it glitter whenever she laughs. All Saito can recall is the scandalized sniff of the waitress when he kissed her goodnight the last time they came; she still looks far too young for him.

Far too young.

He forces himself to look at her; he owes her that. "How long?"

"About six months."

Her fingers are chapped and bony under his desperate grasp.

* * *

Her funeral feels hallucinatory. These lilies, these cards are possibly the least real things that Saito has ever seen. He does not wonder once about dreamscapes, because no halfway decent architect would create anything so transparently impossible.

Ariadne's protégé drops a creamy insubstantial rose into her grave, blinking back tears. "It was an honor to work with her," she says, the whisper pitched to carry. "To learn from her. To know her." Eloquence exhausted, she steps back into the embrace of her team, the Procus Global team: the extractor who'd asked, starry-eyed, if Saito meant that he'd known _the_ Dom Cobb; the giggly chemist whose compounds are derived from Yusuf's; the blushing point man who started wearing waistcoats and parting his hair on the side after Ariadne showed him a picture of Eames and Arthur.

That night, Saito cannot begin to consider the absence of Ariadne; instead he braces his hands against the balcony railing and stares down at the rain-soaked city. He is over a hundred years old, counting the years within his mind, and he is aware of every minute. His health is excellent; he quite possibly might reach that age biologically as well. Certainly, the odds are very high that he will last another twenty years.

The Procus Global dreamers are all in their twenties now. Ariadne was three weeks shy of forty-five, and she was older than any of her original teammates ever were.

He remembers those children by the graveside and thinks that he is probably going to see them buried too.

* * *

He isn't wrong.


End file.
